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From The Electronic Frontier Foundation: Debunking the Myth of "Anonymous" Data
Personal information that corporations collect from our online behaviors sells for astonishing profits and incentivizes online actors to collect as much as possible. Every mouse click and screen swipe can be tracked and then sold to ad-tech companies and the data brokers that service them.
In an attempt to justify this pervasive surveillance ecosystem, corporations often claim to de-identify our data. This supposedly removes all personal information (such as a person's name) from the data point (such as the fact that an unnamed person bought a particular medicine at a particular time and place). Personal data can also be aggregated, whereby data about multiple people is combined with the intention of removing personal identifying information and thereby protecting user privacy.
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However, in practice, any attempt at de-identification requires removal not only of your identifiable information, but also of information that can identify you when considered in combination with other information known about you. Here's an example:
- First, think about the number of people that share your specific ZIP or postal code.
- Next, think about how many of those people also share your birthday.
- Now, think about how many people share your exact birthday, ZIP code, and gender.
According to one landmark study, these three characteristics are enough to uniquely identify 87% of the U.S. population. A different study showed that 63% of the U.S. population can be uniquely identified from these three facts.
We cannot trust corporations to self-regulate. The financial benefit and business usefulness of our personal data often outweighs our privacy and anonymity. In re-obtaining the real identity of the person involved (direct identifier) alongside a person's preferences (indirect identifier), corporations are able to continue profiting from our most sensitive information. For instance, a website that asks supposedly "anonymous" users for seemingly trivial information about themselves may be able to use that information to make a unique profile for an individual.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 13 2023, @03:12AM
Some caveats. In a lot of cases completely bogus data doesn't work. You can't use a non-existent zip code. Typically, websites that demand zip code info check that. You have to use a real zip code. Same with a street address. At first, I just made something up, something plausible and easy to remember, such as 777 7th street, but when the site actually checked that address and couldn't find it, I had to do something else. I ended up giving it a real address, to a car dealership in a different city. It may be only a matter of time before the software says, in effect, "hey, you liar, that's not a residence!" Or, "John Smith does not live at that address!"
I have also tried the fake credit card number to get around those sites that advertise "free" trial, but demand a credit card # before you can utilize their so-called free trial. A completely fake number will be rejected immediately for not satisfying whatever validity checking algorithm credit card companies have built into the number. There are sites that will generate valid CC#'s, but these too fail when the numbers can't be matched up with an existing account. In such cases, I walk. I will not give out my real CC# for a "free" trial.
Then there's the crap about providing a phone number to which a code can be texted. They disingenuously claim it's for security, but I know they care more about harvesting your data. There are web sites that can receive texts at their phone numbers. I've never had any luck getting that to work. The originating system invariably has some sort of blacklist, and equally invariably, those numbers are on it. You have to use a burner phone to stay anonymous.
Then there's sites such as bugmenot [bugmenot.com]. Most of their logins do not work. I have instead resorted to deleting cookies to get around their treacherous use of them to shut you down after you've read whatever number of articles they set as the limit for a free trial. If that doesn't work either, I simply stop visiting those sites.